"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
–Ida B. Wells
A Brief Version of the Lynching of Ell Persons on May 22, 1917
In May, 1917 the decapitated body of a 16 year old white girl, named Antoinette Rappel, a student at Treadwell School, was found at the old Wolf River Bridge near what is now Summer Ave. Suspicion fell on Ell Persons, an African American woodcutter who lived nearby. Persons was arrested twice, interrogated twice and released twice before being captured a third time and reportedly beaten into a confession.
Upon his capture by a mob local papers announced that he would be burned the next morning. The crowd gathered to watch was estimated at 3,000. Vendors set up stands among the crowd and sold sandwiches and snacks. It was reportedly a carnival-like atmosphere.
Persons was hauled to a cleared space beside the abutment on the west side of the river. Containers of gasoline were poured over his body. Some complained that too much gasoline was used and he burned too fast.
Once his charred body had cooled, he was decapitated, and the severed head was photographed and printed on postcards.
No one was ever arrested for the crime.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - As Black History Month comes to a close, Action News 5 looked back on one of the darkest events in Shelby County--the 1917 lynching of Ell Persons, a Black man murdered for a crime historians say he likely did not commit.
The Memphis Landmarks Commission endorsed an application Thursday, Dec. 22, to make the 1917 Ell Persons lynching site part of the National Register of Historic Places.
The Tennessee Historical Commission will consider the designation next month, followed by the National Park Service.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — The site of a brutal mob attack more than a century ago in Memphis could become the first lynching site in the country listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a local historian says.
It was a case that echoed all the way to Washington and New York City.
By Laura Faith Kebede, Special to the Daily Memphian
Published: October 13, 2022 4:00 AM CT
A Symposium to engage courageous conversation about the shadow cast by Ell Person’s lynching.
Sunday, May 22, 2022, marks the 105th anniversary of the lynching of Ell Persons. The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis would like to commemorate this event with a candlelight ceremony of remembrance. We invite you to join us on Facebook Livestream as we have friends of LSP who will give the history of this tragic event, its impact on Memphis and the nation, personal testimony, and call and response. We hope this ceremony will bring repentance and healing from the events that happened over 100 years ago. Please join in via our Facebook page at 3:00 pm on Sunday.
On Monday, March 21, 2022, around 20 students from Valor Christian School in Colorado made a return trip to Memphis to visit LSP's Ell Person's lynching site. This trip was part of their Spring Work Visit project. Good Shepherd United Methodist Church graciously hosted the group prior to the site visit, and LSP Board member John D Ashworth provided a spellbinding explication of the generational impact of slavery and racial violence on persons of color. LSP member Kelsey Lampkin gave a brief reprise of the incident and its impact on Memphis a century ago.
The people who suffered these things—Mary and Hayes Turner, Ell Persons, Jesse Lee Bond, and far, far too many others—were Americans. They were born here. They were citizens. They, and their survivors, were entitled to the same due process under law that you or I would expect. And they did not receive it. The acts they suffered were criminal, and justice has yet to be done. In many cases, the criminal nature of the acts hasn’t even been formally acknowledged.
